By Jon Warner, August - 2024
Digital health technologies have tremendous potential to transform healthcare by improving patient experiences, clinical outcomes, and operational efficiencies. However, for this potential to be realized, it is critical that digital health solutions are appropriately matched to the unique needs, workflows, and priorities of both consumers (for the wellness side of the equation) and patients (when they fall sick) and for the clinicians that serve both. Without considering the end-user experience of both groups, these solutions risk poor adoption, limited use, and failure to achieve desired impacts. This article explores some of the key factors that must be addressed when developing digital health solutions to ensure they are robust and work effectively for patients and providers.
Address Specific Needs
Digital health solutions also need to address the very real and specific needs of both patients and clinicians to be successfully incorporated into care. For patients, a solution may help manage chronic conditions at home, book appointments, review test results, communicate with providers, or pay bills. For clinicians, priorities include streamlining documentation, integrating with electronic health records, eConsult options, prescribing tools, and tracking patient engagement/outcomes. Developing solutions without a deep understanding of core user workflows and pain points risks building features that go unused. User research upfront and throughout the design/testing process is key to identifying priority needs and barriers to care that new technologies could help solve.
Focus on Usability
One of the most important aspects of any digital health solution is usability - how intuitive, easy to use, and user-friendly the interface is. This is especially critical given that digital solutions may be used by people of all ages, types, or groups, technical skill levels, and health statuses. Solutions need to be therefore designed with all potential users in mind through iterative customer discovery around their specific unmet needs or “jobs to be done” AND subsequent usability testing with representative samples of patients and clinicians. As a result of both of these efforts, interfaces should be simple, self-explanatory, and minimize unnecessary steps or inputs. Visual design elements must be clear, readable, and accessible. Functions should be consistently laid out. Help resources need to be readily available for those who encounter issues. Usability is often overlooked but is a core factor in the adoption, engagement and satisfaction of all users. Without high usability, even the most advanced solutions will struggle.
Enable Seamless Data Sharing
For digital health to truly impact care, solutions must facilitate the secure, two-way and ongoing sharing of relevant health data between patients and clinicians. Patients want convenient access to their information, while clinicians need the most up-to-date clinical context to deliver appropriate care. Data standards and application programming interfaces (APIs) that allow seamless integration between patient solutions, provider electronic health records, and other systems are crucial. Patients should be able to view test results, contribute home or remote monitoring readings, complete questionnaires or upload images, while clinicians retrieve this information through their normal workflows. Interoperability challenges clearly remain, but are being progressively addressed through policies and technical advancements. When done right, data sharing empowers both groups and improves outcomes.
Support Multiple Access Points
Given that patients/consumers and clinicians interact throughout their day, digital health solutions need to support access through multiple devices and locations. Web and mobile applications that synchronize information allow use on any computer or mobile device from home, work, or on the go. Push notifications, offline functionality, and responsive design accommodate different contexts of use. While some activities like documentation are best suited for larger screens in clinical settings, remote patient monitoring, appointment booking, or billing/payment are enhanced through mobile convenience. Ensuring solutions can be seamlessly accessed anywhere enhances engagement for all.
Emphasize Security and Privacy
For any digital health solution to gain widespread trust and adoption, the highest standards of security, privacy, and data protection must be in place and clearly communicated to users. This involves multi-factor authentication, encryption of information in transit and at rest, activity logging, access controls tailored to user roles, and regular security audits. Privacy policies and consent processes should be written at an understanding level for all. Any real or perceived risks to sensitive health and personal data will undermine user confidence. Given the sensitivity of information, data governance must remain a continuous focus as technologies and risks evolve. With proper protocols, digital tools can securely empower care, versus deter its use.
Provide Education and Training
Even with intuitive interfaces, new digital health solutions will require some education and guidance (often in multiple languages), especially for older and less educated populations who may be less familiar with technologies. Onboarding, documentation, FAQs, help videos, in-app messaging, and live technical support help users quickly get up to speed so they can focus on health with no troubleshooting. Training clinicians on new functionalities prevents workflow disruptions. Templates, wizards, and automation can reduce learning curves. Partnerships with patient advocacy groups and clinician associations help spread awareness. As technologies advance rapidly, refresher resources ensure continued optimal use. Ongoing education, especially for major updates, is the key to long-term user satisfaction and engagement with digital tools.
Evaluate Outcomes and Gather Feedback
The ultimate test of any digital health solution is whether it achieves the desired outcomes of improving experiences, enhancing care quality, and advancing efficiencies over the long term for patients and clinicians. Metrics should ideally be established from the beginning to track adoption rates, completion of targeted activities, clinical markers, cost-savings, or the return on investment and user satisfaction. Feedback mechanisms allow anonymous input to identify issues, prioritize enhancements, and gauge sentiment. Both quantitative and qualitative data are needed. Regular evaluation and adjustment based on learning ensures solutions continue addressing evolving needs. With proper evaluation, digital tools can mature into integral parts of sustainable care models versus one-off projects.
Consider Integration Opportunities
When designing digital health solutions of any kind (platform, apps, wearables, devices, and more), consideration should be given to how they might integrate or interface with other core systems regularly relied upon by patients and clinicians. This could include a patient portal integrating within an electronic health record, a remote monitoring app sharing data with a physician dashboard, or a prescription management tool syncing with a pharmacy system. Looking for logical connections between solutions enhances workflows versus adding disjointed new steps. It also allows leveraging existing user authentication, data schemas, and platforms to reduce redundancy. Vendors should explore open application programming interfaces (APIs) and standards to facilitate integration where synergies exist. Interoperability supports broader digital transformation goals.
Conclusion
For digital health to reach its true potential, solutions must be developed with an equal emphasis on meeting the needs of both consumers/patients and clinicians as end users or customers of the health technology. A focus on high usability, addressing specific pain points, enabling seamless data sharing, supporting multiple access contexts, ensuring security and privacy, providing education, and evaluating outcomes helps match the right technologies to each user group. Considering integration opportunities further streamlines workflows. Only by designing with all stakeholders in mind can digital health solutions be robust enough to achieve adoption, drive engagement, and deliver on the promise of better health, experiences, and efficiencies for all. With user-centric approaches, technologies will become integrated tools empowering sustainable care models of the future.
This article was written by Jon Warner, Executive Chair of Citizen Health Strategies (CHS). CHS optimizes the end-to-end care experience with advisory, consulting, and product-building services to help deliver the Quintuple Aim – enabling better, faster, and more personalized well and sick care for all.
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